


Reverse Flashpoint

by creatureofhobbit



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2019-11-06 18:58:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17945270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: When Eobard suggested it to Nora, giving Barry the metahuman cure seemed the perfect way to stop him disappearing in 2024. But when Nora returns to a timeline where her actions led to the Metahuman Wars, the Anti Metahuman Act being passed, the end of Team Flash and the Lockwood family taking control along with ARGUS, she realises she made a mistake.





	1. Chapter 1

They’re all celebrating now that Dad’s come back from the speed force with the cure, all ready to go; Cisco because he can finally make the choice to take away his powers permanently if he wants to which Nora thinks he still does, Caitlin happy because Cisco is and because it works, Sherloque because he was right. As for Nora’s mom, she’s just happy to have Dad back. She doesn’t seem to have thought of the possibility that’s going through Nora’s mind right now. But then, even if the idea did occur to Iris West-Allen, Nora’s not sure that she would ever voice it to anyone. They only just got things sorted out after Nora found out that Iris had her implanted with a power-dampening chip, and then Iris finding out she was going to do that in the future. It’s probably best that they never go down the route of what if Iris had given Nora the cure that Cisco has just discovered, taking her powers from her forever.

The metahuman cure isn’t something Nora knows about from her own timeline. If anything, she thinks her presence must have made a change to the timeline which made it possible for Cisco to develop the cure this year; as far as she’s aware from her own time there was no such thing available. Nora thinks about Killer Frost, and how she’d been so afraid that Caitlin would use the cure to get rid of her that she’d changed all the research to total crap; if she had thought that the cure would be available this soon, Nora might have been tempted to give her a hand.

Now that the cure exists, and will exist at the time when a future Iris will arrange to dampen her daughter’s powers, Nora wonders whether Iris will consider it as an option, to take her powers from her forever instead of just dampening them, allowing her the chance to eventually get them back. Possibly not, considering that a) when she found out what her future self was going to do, she had been horrified and couldn’t believe she’d done it, and b) Team Flash have already agreed they’re not gonna force the cure on anyone, well, apart from Cicada, but he’s a special case. Still, she wonders what her life would have been like in a timeline where Iris had used the cure on her.

 

_She can’t even speak to her mother, can’t even look at her now Eobard Thawne has told her that once upon a time Nora had powers like her father, but that Iris West-Allen had taken the decision to inject her with the metahuman cure, when she was still too young to make the decision for herself, to even really be aware of her powers._

_Eobard says they’d made the decision never to make anyone take the cure against their will. So why had her mother forced it upon her? When Nora confronted her after she first found out, Iris had said she was scared that one day Nora would end up disappearing on her too, and the only way she could be sure of that was to take Nora’s speed from her, to stop her disappearing along with her father, to stop her actually risking herself by looking for Barry, to remove any risks of her changing the timeline. But that should have been Nora’s choice to make for herself, and in taking away her powers, Iris had taken away a big part of who Nora West-Allen could have been._

_It was okay for her. Iris had memories of Barry. What did Nora have apart from a few old photos, a newspaper cutting about him going missing, and a lot of trips to the Flash Museum which she now knows a lot of was inaccurate anyway? All she wanted was the opportunity to spend some time with her father, and Iris had deprived her of that._

 

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Nora said to Eobard. “You said you know how to save my dad. You have to tell me what I need to do to stop him going missing in 2024. Then if he doesn’t go missing, my mom won’t use the metahuman cure on me.”

“Listen to what you just said there, Nora,” Eobard smiled, a cruel smile. “You have the answer right there. You know what you have to do. You already changed things by making it possible for the metahuman cure to be made now.”

“What do you mean?” Nora asked.

“Barry Allen disappeared in 2024 due to using his superspeed. There is one thing you can do before that happens. If Barry didn’t have his superspeed, then…”

“Then it wouldn’t happen.” Nora nodded. “But that’s exactly what I don’t want to happen to me. There has to be some other way. Are you seriously suggesting that I do to my father what I just told you I was afraid of my mother doing to me?”

“It’s the only certain way of making sure that you don’t grow up without your father, that you don’t have the miserable childhood you described to me. There’s only one way of saving Barry from disappearing, and that’s to take away his ability to disappear in the first place. The Flash will no longer be there, but Barry Allen, your father, will. You can go back now and do that, and he’ll be part of your childhood, part of your life. Or you can refuse my advice, and he disappears in 2024.”

Nora wanted to argue further with Eobard, to say she couldn’t take her father’s choices away from him in the way her mother had done to her. But what if Eobard was right, and taking Barry’s powers was the only way to be certain he would be around to watch her grow up?

“I can’t do this, Eobard. I can’t take his choice away, take away that part of him.”

“Then you will become the reason why your father disappears in the future. The choice is yours, Nora. You can follow my advice and save your father, or you can let him remain the Flash and disappear. Which do you want to do?”

To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Iris had guessed Nora would try to do this, understood as soon as Nora confronted her about having dampened her powers that Nora would try and use them to go back in time, to try and spend time with her parents, maybe to see if she could change time and stop Barry from disappearing in 2024.

She hadn’t tried to stop her, mostly because she knew that Nora wouldn’t take any notice of her if she tried, but also because there was a part of Iris that would always wonder what a future would be like if she and Barry were still together, if she and Nora had a closer relationship during Nora’s childhood and Nora still wanted Iris as a part of her life. If Nora can actually do something to bring that about, is it really such a bad thing?

You obviously thought so once, Iris told herself, because you chose to take the choice away from her back then instead of leaving her the freedom to make her mind up for herself. And she had questioned the decision ever since she made it, wondered if she should have allowed Nora the choice instead of depriving her of that right. Then she’d imagine a future where Nora, trying to find out what had happened to Barry, ended up disappearing too, and she would feel sure all over again that she had done the right thing. And not too long after that, she would inevitably think about the possibility that Nora could actually change something, that a timeline where Iris, Barry and Nora lived happily together as a family could still exist, and she would wonder all over again whether she made a mistake.

But Iris now understood that she should have been more honest with Nora throughout her childhood, should have told her as much as she could about Barry instead of shutting her out. Even just corrected her on some of those damn inaccuracies in the Flash Museum. And even in the midst of her own loss of Barry, Iris should have taken more into account of the fact that Nora too had lost her father. One time when Nora had been staying with Iris’s dad, Cecile and Jenna, Iris had gone to collect her and accidentally overheard her telling Jenna that she always felt like a part of her was missing, but she could never quite explain it. Jenna had suggested that that was something to do with the fact that Nora had no real memories of Barry, and Nora had doubtfully accepted it, or at least she had to Jenna’s face. Iris had made herself known at that point, and has often wondered since what else she might have heard Nora say if she hadn’t. But she’d noticed something else as well that day, how much more at ease Nora had seemed with Jenna and Cecile than she ever did at home. Over time, Nora had started asking to spend more and more time with them, and Iris had agreed to it, wanting Nora to be happy, and if spending time with her relatives was what made her happy, then Iris would do that for her. It was only afterwards, after the time in Nora’s high school when some teacher had assumed that Cecile was Nora’s mother, or the time when Nora had talked about Joe and Cecile attending her high school graduation but assumed Iris would be at work, that Iris had understood how much she had been pushing Nora away.

 

 

Iris didn’t know what she had expected from the next time she saw Nora again after Nora’s attempt to go back in time and spend some time with Barry. She’d even wondered if she would see Nora again at all, whether she would choose to return to 2049 but to maintain her silence with Iris, or whether she would even choose not to return. But she certainly wasn’t expecting Nora running up to her, throwing her arms around Iris’s neck, and apologising for the way she had treated her.

“I think I understand it now,” Nora began, “why you made the decision to dampen my powers, why you were worried about something happening to me. But it’s going to be okay now, Mom, because I know what I have to do.”

Iris looked at Nora, tears running down her face, and a part of her knew instinctively she wasn’t going to like the answer to what she was about to ask. “What do you mean?”

“Eobard Thawne showed me the way. And you did, a bit, because if my dad doesn’t have his powers, then he isn’t going to disappear in 2024. We can have that future together, you, me, Dad. He’ll get to watch me grow up, you’ll get to spend your life together, and you and I can have a close relationship growing up. It’ll all be how it should be.”

But Iris hadn’t heard a word after Nora mentioned that name. “Did you just say Eobard Thawne? You’ve been working with him?”

“And he’s helped me see what I have to do. I’m going back to fix things, there’s a metahuman cure now and I’m going to give it to him.”

“Nora, come back here, anything that man said can never be the way…Nora?” Iris called after her.

But Nora was gone.

 

 

Nora ran, unable to contain her excitement at the thought of the future she was running back to, one where she had had the childhood she could only have dreamed of before, one where her family were together and happy. She ran down the familiar streets, making her way to her childhood home. It was only as she approached her home that she finally allowed herself to slow down, to notice that the street was not as she had last seen it. Multiple properties bore boarded up windows, at least one was cordoned off altogether, an advertising hoard now had the words “Metas OUT!” sprayed across it in black paint. Posters adorned the walls, demanding the turning over of all known or suspected metahumans or sympathisers to ARGUS. To Nora’s horror, there was one demanding information on the whereabouts of her aunt, Jenna West.

“What is this?” Nora whispered as she tentatively pushed open the door of her childhood home, which at least was still standing. “Mom? Dad?”

Her father was there, looking older even than he should have been, her mother by his side, brief flash of something Nora couldn’t identify even as she turned towards her.

“Oh my God,” Nora whispered. “What have I done?”


	3. Chapter 3

Immediately after Nora gives Barry the cure:

_My name is Barry Allen, and I used to be the fastest man alive. I was a metahuman, secretly working with my friends at Star Labs to save this city from other metahumans. But when my daughter came back from the future, she changed the timeline. My former best friend, Cisco, managed to find a cure for metahumans, and Nora chose to use it on me, in order to prevent me disappearing in 2024. Now I have to get used to being regular old Barry Allen again, and try not to think about the time when I was the person who saved Central City. I was The Flash._

 

Barry knows he shouldn’t blame Nora. He understands her reasoning; hadn’t he, after all, once tried to change time so his mother would still be alive? Can he really condemn Nora, who had grown up without a father because in her timeline Barry had disappeared never to return, for trying to change things so that Barry would never leave her?

Yet even as Barry understands why Nora did what she did, is happy that this way he’ll get the chance to watch her grow up, there will always be a part of him that thinks that choice should never have been taken away from him. They’d agreed it back when Cisco first came up with the idea of a cure; no one would be forced to take it against their will, with the exception of Cicada, and now Nora has forced the decision on him. Maybe if she’d just put the idea to him, given him the chance to make his own mind up instead of rushing in and making the decision without giving him the chance to think things through, let them discuss it as a family, maybe Barry could have even considered the idea; have a bit more time as The Flash, but then take the cure some time before his impending disappearance, to prevent it from happening. But it should have been his own decision, to make when he was ready, which he wasn’t yet.

Cisco blames himself, for having come up with the cure in the first place, and for having allowed Nora the opportunity. Sherloque wishes he had spoken out about his suspicions of Nora sooner, when there was still a chance of stopping her from using the cure. Barry doesn’t blame him; he doesn’t think he would have taken Sherloque seriously if he had tried speaking to Barry about Nora. There was no way he would have thought of Nora working with Eobard Thawne.

As for Nora herself, she’d run off almost as soon as she’d injected Barry with the serum. He can only assume that she’s returned to the 2049 of this timeline, where she had grown up with both her parents. Part of him thinks it’s not a bad thing, because Cisco and Caitlin had become pretty angry with her in the moment and been all set to confront her about using the metahuman cure on someone who hadn’t requested it. The other part of him wished he could have had the chance to properly discuss it with Nora, to understand why she did it.

 

A week after Barry was given the cure:

It was going to take Barry time to get used to being regular old Barry Allen again, to have to do everything at regular speed, and to know that it wasn’t like that time when his speed ended up transferring to Iris temporarily, but he knew he’d eventually get it back. 

But when the news broke of the mass breakout from the metahuman wing at Iron Heights, it was the first time Barry allowed himself to feel any real anger at Nora, at the fact that she had allowed for a situation where all these metahumans were running around Central City, and with Barry minus his powers, Wally still in Tibet and Nora herself back in 2049, they had all these metahumans running around the city and no speedster to take them on.

Caitlin was spending more time as her Killer Frost persona, and Ralph was going out there as much as he could as Elongated Man, while Sherloque was spending ages trying to work out calculations to determine where they would hit next. But when Mark Mardon was creating one of his storms in one part of town, one of Zoom’s friends was causing explosions in another and Geomancer causing earthquakes in a third, it was more than they could handle alone.

 

“How the hell did so many of them get out at once anyway?” Caitlin asked after struggling in to Star Labs, after a failed attempt to take down Top. “And it feels like something’s different somehow, like their powers have all been enhanced or something.” 

“Bravo, Ms. Snow,” came a new voice, accompanied by a slow handclap. Barry, Iris, Sherloque, Cisco and Caitlin turned around to see Eobard Thawne standing before them. “That’s exactly what I have done.” He held up a bottle. “This was Mr. Ramon’s serum. Since your daughter had told me what he was working on, I was able to tweak it, so instead of suppressing the abilities of metahumans, it now enhances them. And now you have been given the cure, there’s nothing you can do to prevent the rise of the metahumans. I always said that I would be the one to prove my superiority as a speedster, and the best part of it is, it was your daughter who helped me achieve that.”

 

2049:

“Mom? Dad?” Nora tentatively stuck her head around the door. “What’s happened? What have I done?”

“Did you honestly just ask me that?” Iris began, but Barry looked Nora up and down. “She’s just come from 2019, Iris. She’s come back from when she gave me the cure.”

“I thought I was saving you,” Nora began. “I thought I was giving us a chance to be a family again.” She glanced at the television, where a breaking news broadcast was blaring. “200 Presumed Dead In Central City University Explosion: Lisa Snart’s Golden Gliders Claim Responsibility.” Lisa Snart, Leonard’s sister? What was this?

“But I saw the Wanted poster outside. What’s happened to Jenna?” Nora began. “And what are all these posters saying Metas Out?”

“Let me explain,” Barry began, seeing Iris was too upset to speak. “Since 2021, it’s been illegal to be a metahuman. President Ben Lockwood passed the Anti-Metahuman Act after Eobard Thawne’s return. Now he’s in charge of ARGUS, and they’re in charge of policing metahumans. Any they find are being held in ARGUS containment cells. They’ve taken over STAR Labs as one of them.”

Ben Lockwood…Nora had heard that name before, hadn’t that friend of her parents, Kara, mentioned it when she was visiting Earth-1 back when that Deegan guy was trying to rewrite reality? “His son, George, is our President now and he’s expanded the act to include all sympathisers to metahumans.”

“I don’t understand,” Nora sobbed. “Why has he done that?”

“Eobard Thawne returned to Central City not long after you left,” Barry explained. “It was all part of his plan. He’d been determined to take my place as the Flash before he found out he was destined to be the Reverse Flash, and when he knew there was going to be a metahuman cure his plan all along was for you to give it to me, so he could take over and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop him.”

“He played me the whole time,” Nora muttered; Iris snorted, but neither Barry nor Nora responded to that.

“Not long before he came out of hiding, there was a mass breakout from Iron Heights,” Barry went on. “Specifically, the metahuman wing. Thawne had been experimenting with the cure, and he’d managed to come up with another serum that enhanced the abilities of metas instead of removing them. With some of the more dangerous metahumans loose, like Weather Wizard, Rag Doll, Tar Pit, and some escapees joining them, it led to what became known as the Meta Wars. After two years of war, President Lockwood seized power on an anti-meta campaign. His legislation forced lots of metahumans into hiding. Some formed their own rebel groups.”

“Is that what Lisa Snart’s Golden Gliders are doing?”

“That’s one of them,” Barry explained. “There are other groups too. Jenna is part of a hidden underground movement, which Ralph is also part of.”

“Where can I find her?” Nora demanded. “I have to see her.”

Barry scribbled down an address on a bit of paper, handed it to Nora while ignoring Iris’s glares. “Before you go there, there are a few more things you need to know…” he began.

But Nora was gone.


	4. Chapter 4

ARGUS Headquarters, Central City. Formerly STAR Labs. 2049

“And so that concludes our tour of the holding cells,” former president Ben Lockwood, now overseeing ARGUS, said to his son George, current president, who was visiting the facility in Central City. 

George nodded in approval. “I’m happy to see that the millions of dollars I have invested in ARGUS has been put to good use.”

“And this is our science facility,” Ben went on. “This is where our breakthroughs in identifying and locating metas, and containing them once they’re on our radar, take place. And this is the man who’s responsible for most of it. Without him, we wouldn’t have made half the progress that we have today in taking down metahumans. George, I’d like you to meet my right hand man, Cisco Ramon.”

“Mr. President.” Cisco shook his hand.

“Please. Anyone who’s done as much work as you have in bringing down metahumans is welcome to call me George. I understand you were the person instrumental in creating the original cure for metahumans?”

“That’s true. And I regret the way it was used by Eobard Thawne.”

“You are not responsible for the actions of that man,” George Lockwood began, but Cisco continued “I continue to work every day to establish what really happened to him. Some out there still believe he was killed when Gold City Bank fell in ’46, but I for one have always thought he escaped somehow, and I’m determined to keep developing the technology that will one day prove that.”

“I believe Mr. Ramon is a great asset to your team,” President Lockwood turned to his father.

“I knew he was going to be when I first encountered him after the Fall of Hudson U in 2023,” Ben Lockwood patted Cisco on the back.

“My girlfriend, Kamilla, was covering the story for the Central City Citizen,” Cisco began. “She was killed in the explosion, caused by a metahuman who had had his powers for creating fireballs with his bare hands enhanced by that man. She shouldn’t even have been there in the first place. She was only put in touch with that newspaper by another metahuman, one who wouldn’t stop trying to force the issue of introducing her to my former friends even after I made it clear I didn’t want to inflict that life on her.”

“I found Cisco at the church, not long afterwards,” Ben Lockwood explained, “and invited him along to one of my support groups. I felt I could immediately relate to him, as I am sure you understand.”

Cisco nodded. “Of course…your father, and your wife.”

“Well, I am confident that Central City is in safe hands with you,” George Lockwood smiled. “You mentioned something about new developments to the drones?”

“Of course,” Cisco replied. “I’m happy to show you. And it happens that this very day, they have brought us success.” He typed in a few keys on his machine; Nora West-Allen’s face filled the screen.

“You have a lead on the whereabouts of Public Enemy Number One?” George Lockwood asked.

“After so long with no knowledge of her whereabouts, one of my drones finally picked her up today. She was seen heading to her parents’ house. My drone is keeping a watch on her, to see where she goes. It’s believed likely that she may attempt to join up with one of the rebel groups.”

“And therefore leading to rounding up not only West-Allen, but a rebel metahuman group too.” President Lockwood smiled. “My father is right. You really are an asset to our cause.”

 

Headquarters of Lisa Snart’s Golden Gliders. 2049

“Tonight is a victory,” Lisa Snart exclaimed as she gestured towards the television where footage of the destruction of Central City University continued to air, message flashing across the screen that her Golden Gliders had claimed responsibility, and all around her cheered. “Tonight we make it clear to ARGUS that metahumans are never going to be defeated.”

She looked around at the faces surrounding her, her face turning suddenly sober. “And tonight we honour our fallen comrade, Mark Mardon, the Weather Wizard, who proudly went down fighting against our common foe.”

“More like knocked himself out with a piece of shrapnel brought down by his own goddamn lightning,” someone muttered. “Mardon always was a fool.”

“We fight on in his name,” Lisa Snart roared as the crowd leapt to their feet, raising their glasses. “And we fight on in the name of our leader, Eobard Thawne.”

Killer Frost didn’t drink this time. It still felt strange to her, drinking to the memory of the man who had lied to her for so many years, acting as a mentor to her and yet having been working against her and her former team. Yet she knew she shouldn’t still be thinking like that; that was Caitlin Snow’s grudge, not Killer Frost’s, and Caitlin Snow was gone. Then she noticed the eyes of Peekaboo on her, and immediately took a sip.

“Our fight is not yet over,” Lisa continued as she gestured towards the television, where President George Lockwood was addressing the residents of Central City with some bullshit about how he stood with them. “President Lockwood intends to hold a rally in Central City tomorrow night. Some bullshit about the anniversary of the Anti-Metahuman Act.”

“And you want us to target the rally?” Top asked.

“I want some of you to target the rally,” Lisa explained. “But only as a decoy. Our real target is ARGUS Labs, where Ben Lockwood, Cisco Ramon and friends have been holding our friends. No longer will metahumans be experimented on, tortured, forced to take the cure against their will. No longer will family members and friends be subjected to imprisonment merely for having a loved one who is a metahuman. We will set them free to continue the fight against Lockwood’s Anti-Metahuman act. We will bring the ARGUS facility to its knees!”

As all around Lisa began to cheer again, Amunet approached Killer Frost. “Is it just me, or are you not looking too happy about that?”

“It’s not just you, Amunet,” Godspeed interrupted. “I noticed it too.”

Killer Frost angrily shook them off, knowing that they were right and they probably had observed something on her face; she could not write off Cisco Ramon as “just an old friend of Caitlin’s, not of Killer Frost’s”, given the amount of time she had spent with him in the Killer Frost persona as well. Yet she also knew that she had been unable to forgive him for turning to the Lockwoods, for working against the metahumans, against those who had once been his friends, because he had fallen for all the bullshit they had fed him. And while she still found it hard to love and revere Eobard Thawne as those around her did, Killer Frost could not deny that he had given her the outlet to embrace her powers. Amunet and Godspeed were right; her loyalty should be to the Golden Gliders now, not to a past where she was Caitlin Snow.

Sensing Lisa Snart’s eyes on her, Killer Frost immediately plastered a huge smile on her face. “So which team do you want me on? Distraction at the rally, or breaking our people out of ARGUS?”

 

Nora ran, through the streets she had once called home, past the “Metas Out” signs, towards the address Barry had given her. Maybe she should have stopped, listened to whatever it was Barry was trying to tell her before she ran…but she was there now.

“Jenna?” Nora whispered as she pushed open the door to the abandoned looking building where Jenna’s resistance group had made their home.

Jenna Horton-West broke away from the woman sat next to her, took slow and deliberate steps towards Nora before slapping her across the face.

“You dare to come here and find me?” she yelled. “Get the hell out.”

 

Cisco gestured towards Ben Lockwood, pointing at his computer screen.

“The tracker we had on XS?” he said. “It’s led her here. I think we just found one of our rebel metahuman groups.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Let me handle this, Jenna,” came a new voice; Nora realised she was looking at an older Ralph Dibny. 

“She shouldn’t even be here,” snapped the girl who had been sat with Jenna. “You know what she did, and you know how Jenna feels about her.”

“I do know, Victoria,” Ralph replied. “But I also know that this Nora just came from 2019, when she gave her dad the cure, and she doesn’t know what’s happened in this timeline. I understand how you feel, but please, let me deal with it.”

“You’re seriously letting her stay here?” Victoria demanded, but Ralph held up his hands. “Nora. I’m getting the impression you don’t know anything that’s happened in this timeline.”

“Dad was trying to tell me something,” Nora admitted, “but I just wanted to see Jenna so badly, I ran straight here.” Nora and Jenna hadn’t been close in the few weeks before Nora had left for 2019, since Nora had found out that Jenna, along with the rest of her family, had known that Iris had dampened her powers, but before that, she’d always considered Jenna her best friend after Lia, had chosen her to confide in about how she’d always felt there was something missing from her life which she had put down to growing up without knowing her father…and now Jenna felt so strongly about seeing her again that her girlfriend was trying to physically get Nora out of there?

“And don’t even try it, Victoria,” Ralph warned. To Nora, he explained “Victoria has the power of persuasion. She can influence minds, Jenna inherited Cecile’s power to read them, they’re a good match.” 

“Like I’m gonna waste time on that,” Victoria snorted. “The person whose attempts to get her father back meant that my girlfriend grew up with no parents at all? I should just throw her out of here myself, or get Michael to use his super strength to.”

“No parents?” Nora demanded. “What do you mean? What happened to Grandma Cecile and Grandpa Joe?”

Victoria stared at her in disgust. “You really don’t know what you’ve done, do you? It’s because of you that Cecile Horton is dead.”

As Victoria stomped out after Jenna, Ralph turned to Nora. “That wasn’t exactly how I wanted to break it to you. It’s true, Cecile died in the STAR Labs holding cells. ARGUS came for her in 2026,” he explained. “They’d started looking into how exactly she had such a good record with prosecutions, and became aware she was a meta. She was taken to the holding cells in STAR Labs and interrogated. It’s better you don’t know the details. Joe was taken to Iron Heights, where they held anyone suspected of being a metahuman sympathiser after they changed the anti-metahuman laws. He’s still there to this day. Jenna was taken to a group home.”

“But why didn’t Iris and Barry take her in?” Nora demanded.

“Another change in the law. Any children whose parents were taken away under the Anti-Metahuman Act were automatically taken to group homes. The idea behind that was to ascertain whether any of them had directly inherited powers from their parents as you did, and anyone found to have inherited powers would be given the meta cure when they turned eighteen. But Iris and Barry were always under suspicion; they would never have been approved to bring Jenna up. She escaped the group home a few months before her eighteenth birthday, and came to find me.”

“And the rest of Team Flash?” Nora asked.

Ralph looked at her, and Nora realised that he too was angry with her, perhaps not as much so as Jenna and her parents, but still angry. “You really didn’t give your dad chance to explain anything, did you? There’s been no Team Flash for a long time.” Nora remembered Ralph telling her once, not that long before she gave Barry the cure, that Team Flash had been the only time in his life when he’d really felt like he had friends and belonged somewhere; she had caused that loss to him just as much as she had to her family. It was only now sinking in; she’d not seen as much of Grandma Cecile and Grandpa Joe in the weeks before she first went back in time, still angry with them for the fact that they had known all along that her mother had dampened her powers and had gone along with it, had colluded in keeping it from her, but she’d always known in the back of her mind that they would still be there for her when she was ready to return to them. 

“Kamilla was killed when she was covering a news item for Iris on one of the meta attacks,” Ralph explained. “Cisco has always blamed me because I was the one who set her up with that job in the first place and was the one to push for her to spend time with the rest of us. He ended up turning to Ben Lockwood’s group, and got recruited to ARGUS. Caitlin…she reacted badly to that. Killer Frost’s taken her over altogether now, and she’s joined with Lisa Snart’s Golden Gliders.”

“That group who were on the news at my parents’ house?” Nora grabbed Ralph by the arm, searching his face for any sign that at any moment he was going to say he was joking, and realising all over again that this nightmare was only too real. “I can fix this. I can go back, not give my dad the cure.”

“Oh, I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”  
Nora whirled around at the sound of the new voice; a group of men, all dressed in uniforms with an ARGUS logo Nora had never seen before, had burst through the door. One of them hurled a spherical purple object to the floor, where it burst open immediately on landing, releasing a cloud of purple smoke into the air.

“Cisco Ramon’s latest invention,” the man smirked; Nora got a quick glimpse of his name badge and noticed that it read “O. Graves”. “Drop one of these in a group of metahumans and it disables their powers long enough to get them into custody. And you, Nora West-Allen, are someone we’ve been looking for for a long time. Going straight to your parents? Not the smartest move you could have made,” Graves roughly grabbed her wrists and forced them into power dampening cuffs; as Nora watched she could see cuffs being forced onto Jenna, Victoria, the guy named Michael with the super strength and all the other metahumans. A slow smile spread across his face as he caught sight of Ralph.

“The Elongated Man,” Graves smirked. “We come here looking for West-Allen, we find you too. Talk about two birds with one stone. Cisco will be very pleased that we managed to capture you.” Graves and his friends bundled the metahumans into their van. “Mr. Lockwood is expecting you.”


	6. Chapter 6

“Citizens of Central City,” George Lockwood began, “on this night, the 30th anniversary of the Battle for Central City, where ARGUS triumphed against Eobard Thawne and his army of enhanced metahumans…”

“Yeah, you triumphed so well that he got away from you that day, evaded you until ’46 and you still don’t know if the guy’s alive or dead!” heckled someone in the audience.

George Lockwood ignored the interruption. “Tonight we celebrate the victory of ARGUS, the end of the Metahuman Wars, the cleansing of our city. On that night in 2019, we saved this city.”

“The Flash used to save our city, asshole, a metahuman!” called out someone else. 

Killer Frost waited for Lockwood to give the order to his security detail to find the hecklers and seize them. However, Lockwood instead chose to ignore them and continue with his speech, ignoring also the persistent rain and wind, courtesy of Weather Witch.

“I know there are some of you out there who still have your doubts,” he went on, “and believe me, I understand. When I was a young boy, not long after the Metahuman Wars began, I had my doubts too that my father’s methods were the right way to go. I foolishly believed that there could be some good in metahumans, that they could be helped.”

“Here we go again,” Weather Witch rolled her eyes. “How many times now have we heard the same old story about the time he found his mother dead killed by a meta? Guy brings the same story out every time there’s one of these rallies. Pass me a violin.” She stuck her fingers down her throat, pretending to vomit as someone else in the crowd started jeering. Killer Frost didn’t know who those guys out there were that were heckling him, but whoever they were, they were doing a good job of distracting Team Lockwood. Her splinter faction sent there to cause the distraction while Lisa Snart sent people in to free the metahuman prisoners almost wasn’t needed.

For a moment, Killer Frost thought back to the time when she had been part of Team Flash, part of putting some of those metahumans behind bars. Even now that she had turned her back on that life, she still wasn’t sure it was a wise idea to let some of them roam the streets freely. Then she saw Lockwood working himself up, ranting about metahumans, and Killer Frost knew she had to stop thinking this way. She’d made her choice, she’d chosen the metahumans.

“Lockwood’s getting a little hot under the collar there,” Weather Witch smirked as she watched him addressing one of the hecklers.

Killer Frost smiled. “Maybe it’s time to cool things down a bit.”

 

 

Was this the same route down which ARGUS had taken her mother, back when they first came for her? Jenna couldn’t really remember that time, had blocked it out from her memories. Mostly, she remembered trying to cling on to Cecile’s legs, hoping that would stop the ARGUS men from taking her, and Joe trying to tell her to be brave, but that it was only temporary and that they’d see each other again.

Jenna wondered if Joe had believed that in the moment he said it.

Instead, they had taken Jenna to the care home, still trying to tell her it was only temporary. She’d met Victoria and Michael there, spent her days planning how they would get out of there and overthrow the Lockwood regime, prove to people that not all metahumans were bad and that some wanted to use their powers to help people. She still remembered all the tests they had been subjected to in an attempt to establish whether any of them had inherited powers from their parents, how she had tried to hide her ability to read thoughts for so long until the day she accidentally let slip that she knew something that hadn’t been said aloud. She remembered how they had been segregated into those who had inherited some form of powers from their parents and those who had not; remembered the constant message that they were second class citizens, would remain so until they turned eighteen and were able to be given the cure.

They had eventually succeeded in escaping a few months before Jenna’s eighteenth birthday; turned their backs on the home, made their way to the hideout where Ralph had already started founding their resistance, leading the mission to prove that there was good in metahumans. Sometimes she still thought about that moment when Victoria had asked her to slice into her flesh, to remove the power dampening chip the home had inserted once it had become clear that she had indeed inherited powers, fearing the whole time that her shaking hands would cause her to nick an artery, and then when Michael had held her down so Victoria could do the same to her, opening up that world which the home had been denying to them. And when Jenna was out of there, she had immediately changed her name from West to Horton-West, as a way of honouring the memory of her mother.

She’d made a vow to her mother once, promised that she would do whatever it took to fight the oppression of metahumans. Now as Otis Graves drove them to their destination, she knew she had lost her final chance to keep that promise.

Most nights, Ralph still dreamed of Kamilla.

He still remembered Cisco, that day the news had been brought to him that Kamilla was dead, killed by a piece of stray shrapnel while helping Iris cover a story on the Metahuman Wars, turning on him, punching him in the face and yelling at him that it was all his fault, that if he hadn’t pushed so hard for Kamilla to be part of the group and got her that job in the first place she wouldn’t be dead, and Ralph couldn’t argue with that fact. He’d killed Kamilla just as much as if he’d been the one behind the attack.

Barry had broken up the fight in the end, tried to say to Cisco that Thawne and his team, and not Ralph, were responsible, but Ralph had known in his heart that he was wrong, that he couldn’t stay. That was when he’d first started his resistance group, determined just to survive the Metahuman Wars at the start, then their goal became to prove to the likes of ARGUS and President Lockwood that there was some good in metahumans and a future worth fighting for. It wasn’t long afterwards that he had learned that Cisco had also turned his back on what was left of Team Flash, turned towards ARGUS, believing that was the way for him to deal with his loss.

This was going to be the first time he had seen Cisco face to face since the day of the fight, and whatever Cisco had planned for him, Ralph still didn’t think he could say he didn’t deserve it.

 

“This isn’t STAR Labs holding cells,” Victoria said as Otis Graves dragged her out of the van.

“That’s your next stop,” Graves growled. “First, we’re gonna show the city how we get results.” As Graves started leading Victoria away, a woman who, judging from her nametag was his sister, grabbed Nora and bundled her out of the back of the van, heading towards what appeared to be some sort of rally. A placard outside the Central City Square read “President George Lockwood Addresses the City”.

“What is this?” Nora asked, struggling to break free from Mercy Graves’s hold even though she knew it was futile. “Are they doing public shaming of metahumans now?”

“Welcome to ARGUS rule,” Mercy snapped as she manhandled Nora through the crowds, towards where the ARGUS people were clearing a path for them.

“And tonight,” President Lockwood announced, “I have a very special announcement. The latest drone technology, as created by my father’s right hand man Cisco Ramon, has led to the capture of one of the metahuman groups operating in the area, including Public Enemy Number One, the metahuman who helped Eobard Thawne in his rise to power, Nora West-Allen!”

There was Cisco, in the crowd standing next to a man who had to be President Lockwood’s father, and as Nora watched, he locked eyes with Ralph, and an expression Nora couldn’t quite identify crossed his face…

“So tonight we celebrate the fact that we’re one step closer to discovering the whereabouts of Eobard Thawne!” Lockwood roared. Nora almost wanted to laugh; if Lockwood thought that capturing her was going to bring him closer to that, he obviously had no clue: if Thawne really had been missing since 2046, Nora had no way of knowing where he was now. 

“You think so?” came a new voice. Nora spun around to see a group of people making their way towards the rally; although she had never met the leader, she recognised her as the woman from the newscast, Lisa Snart. “You’ll have to get through us first!”

“Is that Livewire?” Jenna turned to Victoria, looking at one woman behind Lisa Snart, as the newly arrived group of metahumans surged forward towards the podium where President Lockwood stood. 

Nora didn’t know, but she’d just seen a face she did recognise, one she hadn’t seen since before she first went back to 2019: Godspeed.

“Oh, shrap,” she whispered to herself. “This can’t be good.”


	7. Chapter 7

Nora watched in horror as Lisa Snart’s metahumans ran amok; one metahuman she didn’t think she had ever seen before created a fireball with his hands which he aimed directly at the podium where George Lockwood had been speaking, while another stamped his foot, creating a tremor which rocked the very foundations of the city square.

The metahuman Jenna and Victoria had called Livewire turned to them, grinned as she said “No metahuman’s forced to wear dampening cuffs on my watch!” She shot a bolt of lightning directly at the cuffs on Nora’s wrists, frying the electrics; the cuffs fell from Nora’s wrists, her powers were returned to her.

Ralph, kicking the cuffs away, grabbed Victoria by the arm and said “Victoria, Jenna, you have to get these people out of here. Michael, I might need you.”

Jenna and Victoria started approaching people, trying to direct them out of the square, but Nora exclaimed “That’ll take too long!” Grabbing the nearest person, a woman with a cut to her cheek, she ran to the exit, deposited her hurriedly in a safe area of the city before running back for the next, having cleared a large area of the square before Jenna and Victoria had got their party out. Victoria gave Nora an unwilling nod of approval as she passed her on the way back to the square.

Nora grabbed a woman about her age, ran with her down the same route she had run with so many other people, then as she set her down outside the square, she got a glimpse of her face.

“Lia?”

Lia stared at Nora. “How do you know my name?”

In this timeline, Godspeed obviously hadn’t killed Lia, and yet Lia had never known Nora; in her attempt to save her father, Nora had managed to save her friend at the price of their friendship never having happened. If Nora chose to try and fix things in this timeline, to work with Ralph’s group to fight against the Lockwood regime and prove that not all metahumans were evil, maybe there could be a chance of saving Lia, of becoming friends with her in this timeline. And yet she also understood that she could never make that choice instead of going back and saving the original timeline, stopping herself from giving her father the metahuman cure and saving Cecile, saving Kamilla, allowing Team Flash to remain in its existing form, saving so many metahumans she had never known and yet was personally responsible for their suffering. 

Nora’s father had told her once that there were always consequences to her actions; she was now starting to understand what he had meant. Yet she knew that now wasn’t the time to deal with thinking about the possibility of saving Lia; she had to fix things here first and then go back to 2019, make sure that Barry never got the cure, then she would process her feelings about seeing Lia again on her return. It was time to run back in there, get as many people as she could out of the chaos, then if Godspeed was still there, she’d take care of him, make sure he couldn’t go anywhere near Lia again. Struggling to stay upright as a metahuman she didn’t recognise began causing earth tremors, she swooped in and grabbed someone else, ran with him out of the grounds of the square, then a familiar face buried underneath the rubble of what had been ARGUS’s podium caught her eye. Was that Cisco?

Nora reached out and grabbed Ralph’s arm, gestured in Cisco’s direction, as Ralph immediately took in the situation and called out “Michael, I need you over here!” Even with Michael’s super strength, it took the three of them to get Cisco free of the rubble; Michael glanced behind him and saw President George Lockwood in a similar predicament, hesitated for merely a moment before rushing to free him. Some of the ARGUS people appeared to be holding it together long enough to try and recapture some of the Golden Gliders, including the woman named Livewire who had freed her from the power dampening cuffs. Ben Lockwood, appearing not to have noticed the condition of his son, was chasing Lisa Snart around the square.

Seeing that Cisco was safe with Ralph, and Caitlin looked like she was breaking away from Weather Witch to join them, Nora took a moment to look around her and see if she could locate Godspeed. He didn’t seem to be among the group being loaded into the ARGUS vans, nor was he in the vicinity of the smaller party of metahumans who still seemed to be trying to cause disruption even though Lockwood’s rally was clearly long over.

There he was! “Got you, Godspeed”, Nora whispered, spotting him in the crowd and watching as Ben Lockwood abandoned his attempts to chase Lisa Snart and now appeared to be trying to run after Godspeed himself. A fellow metahuman, who Nora had seen with Michael before ARGUS came for them, reached out and touched her arm. “Nora? I’m Russell. I can create radio waves. If you trick him into running to me, I can use them to interfere with his speed.” Nora didn’t hesitate before whispering “You’re on!” Waving to get Godspeed’s attention, she yelled “Hey, August! Over here! A way to escape the ARGUS assholes!” Godspeed looked at her as though he’d never seen her before (which, of course, he hadn’t; in his timeline they had never met), before shrugging, taking his chances, deciding to trust a fellow speedster and follow her, not questioning the path down which she was steering him until he came into contact with the radio waves emanating from Russell, disrupting the V9 in his system, causing him to fall to the floor.

Without knowing what she was doing, Nora stooped to the floor, picked up a chunk of fallen debris, carefully weighed it in her hands. “This is for Lia, you asshole,” she said, lifting the rock above her head.

“Nora, no!” An elongated arm stretched across the square and took the rock from her hands; Ralph Dibny looked over at her and continued “Leave him to ARGUS. We can still help people here.”

He would still be incarcerated in the timeline Nora intended to return to; Ralph was right, she had to focus on the here and now, on getting people the hell out of there, and deal with the consequences of her actions, with her reaction to seeing Lia unexpectedly like that, to losing the idea of her all over again, at a better time.

 

Cisco had long imagined the day when he saw Ralph again, preferably brought in to the ARGUS facility for questioning. Yet when he had seen Ralph led towards him in the power dampening cuffs, he didn’t get as much satisfaction as he thought he would have. Yes, they could lock him up, they could force a cure on him, but none of those things would bring Kamilla back to him, and he was no longer sure they would make Cisco feel any better. He’d focused on hating Ralph at the time in a way he now knows was wrong; Ralph had not directly caused her death, and if Kamilla hadn’t taken the job for Iris that Ralph had set up, she could well have taken a similar job for someone else and been caught up in the same or another incident anyway.

“Dibny?” he whispered as he saw the face of the man who he had hated for so many years, and yet now he and his friends had been the ones who had saved Cisco when the rubble fell, when they could so easily have left him there. In the moment the history between them fell away, they were just Cisco and Ralph, the guys who had had each other’s backs so many times in the days of Team Flash. And as he looked over Ralph’s shoulder, he realised that Killer Frost had broken away from Lisa Snart, had turned her back even as Lisa was demanding to know why she still cared about one of them, and was rushing to his side. 

“All these years I’ve spent hating metas, hating you, and now you guys were the ones who actually cared enough to save me tonight?”

 

“George?”

Ben Lockwood had abandoned his chase of the metahumans, taken a few steps towards his son. “What did you just say?”

“I said that Cisco’s right,” George Lockwood began. “You saw me trapped underneath all that rubble, and you just carried on trying to run after that speedster. Your own son, trapped, and you felt that your grudge was more important. That guy wasn’t even the same speedster who killed Mom. He’s dead, and you know that, and you still put your hate and anger first. And that metahuman, that guy with the super strength, he had any number of reasons to want to leave me there, but he chose to help me where you didn’t. You’ve spent all these years giving your speeches about how metahumans are all evil, you convinced me to believe it too, and tonight that resistance group have been the ones trying to help people, where you cared more about hurting them. I feel like I’ve been preaching against the wrong people this entire time.”

Nora stepped over to him. “It’s not too late, President Lockwood.”

George stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“I created this mess. I’m going to try and fix it. If I fail, then you have a chance now to turn around this world, to make it the better place it could be where humans and metas can coexist. But if I succeed, then this timeline won’t happen because The Flash will still have his powers and Eobard Thawne won’t be able to take over. You can be the better man, do some good for the country, whether that’s as President or not.” She turned to Cisco. “I’m going to save Kamilla.” She turned to Caitlin. “I’m going to save the timeline where you’re free to be Killer Frost without having to turn to Lisa Snart’s group.” And she turned to Ralph. “And I’m going to save my grandparents, my dad’s powers, and all of Central City. I’m going to bring Team Flash back together again.”


	8. Chapter 8

“So, the Book of Ralph has just the thing for when you want to have an awkward conversation with your girlfriend,” Ralph began.

“And you had success with such a conversation when, exactly?” Cisco asked.

“Let me tell you, Cisco, about this one time in my senior year of high school…”

Cisco burst out laughing. “You’re using high school as an example of how I should have a serious conversation in an adult relationship? And to think I was wondering why you were still single…”

For a moment Nora just stood and listened, enjoyed the fact that they were just Cisco and Ralph, laughing together, close friends once more, teasing each other about that dating advice in a way that they had done so many times before. It was a conversation of the kind that Nora had heard a hundred times, and yet after seeing the two of them in the altered timeline she felt nothing but relief at seeing them act that way again.

But she had no time to lose; she had to get to those samples of cure, make sure they were totally destroyed so the temptation would never fall into her hands again. As she ran, saw the samples where in another timeline she had stolen one of them for Barry, she started smashing the flasks one by one, then thought better of it, and stuffed one in her pocket.

But it wasn’t for Barry.

 

“Nora? What the hell?” Caitlin demanded as she walked in, Cisco and Ralph at her heels, to discover Nora smashing the last of the cure samples. As Barry and Iris followed them, Nora found herself spilling out the whole story of having given the cure to Barry, the Lockwood presidency, Anti Metahuman Act and finally the battle of Central City Square. She was only vaguely aware of the rest of Team Flash talking in the background, from “Damn it, you mean there’s another alternate version of me who’s a total asshole?” (Cisco) to “There’s a version of me where I’m a hero?” (Ralph), as she watched the expression on Barry’s face as he took it all in, knew what Nora had been prepared to do to save him. Without a word to her, Barry turned around and walked from the room. Iris mouthed “I’ll talk to him” at Nora before following him.

 

“She was only trying to save you, Barry,” Iris began.

“She took away my choice in the matter,” Barry argued. “And she worked with Eobard Thawne. He killed my parents, Iris, and in this timeline we all just heard about, he was responsible for killing Cecile and putting Joe in Iron Heights. Nora was responsible for that. Surely you can understand that?”

“Yes, I can,” Iris went on. “But I can also understand why she was so determined to do whatever it took to save you. Do you not think that I’ve thought about it so many times, tried to think of some way of stopping anything happening to you in 2024? But I can’t, because I don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. And yes, it’s true that I wouldn’t have given you the cure, but I think I understand on some level why she did. And Barry – you’re punishing her for something that isn’t even going to happen, because she came back, she stopped herself from giving the cure to you. You saw it for yourself, all the samples have been destroyed. She couldn’t give that to you now even if she wanted to. I do understand why you’re angry, Barry, but I think you need to talk it through with her.”

“I don’t even feel like I’d know what to say right now,” Barry grumbled, but he followed Iris back out to where Ralph, Caitlin and Cisco were still looking stunned.

“It’s okay, Cisco,” Caitlin was saying. “She hasn’t destroyed the formulas. I can make some more.”

“Where did Nora go?” Iris asked. Ralph blinked in surprise, before saying “She locked herself in with Gideon for a few minutes, then she just took off. I tried to talk to her, but she didn’t give me a chance. I don’t know where she went.”

“I think I might,” Barry replied. “Although a better question might be when she went.”

 

2049: 

 

George Lockwood walked through the crowded street, a woman Nora had never seen before at his side. He was no longer president in this reality; the president Nora had remembered from before she first went to 2019 remained in the White House. But Nora had done her research on him (courtesy of Gideon) before she returned to her own time, knew that he was now an executive in an amnesty charity.

“Mr. Lockwood?” Nora ran up to him, clutching something he hadn’t noticed had fallen from the big pile of paperwork he was carrying. “You dropped something.”

“Thank you!” George Lockwood exclaimed. “My mother’s birthday card. I was just on my way to meet my parents for her birthday dinner.”

So Lydia Lockwood was still alive in this restored timeline and had not met her end at the hand of one of Eobard Thawne’s metahuman army…Nora had managed to fix one thing. “I hope you have a great time at the meal. Wish her a happy birthday.”

She turned to walk away, but George Lockwood called her back. “Wait a second…do I know you?”

Nora shook her head. “Not any more.”

Lockwood frowned in confusion, but Nora ran on, knowing she had several other stops on her journey.

 

Jenna had been surprised when Nora had suggested the shopping trip, considering the way things had been left with them before Nora went back to 2019, but had been happy to go along with it. As Nora listened to Jenna talking about her misadventures in online dating, she was only half listening, thinking of what she was planning to do as she suggested a new restaurant they’d never tried before.

“Looks like this place is full,” Nora began as she approached the table where Victoria, Michael and Russell sat together, “Is it okay if we join you?”

She may not have hit it off with Victoria when she met her in the other timeline, yet Nora had to admire the way Victoria had defended Jenna, had done what she could to ensure everyone escaped the carnage in Central City Square, and it had been clear to her that Victoria and Jenna made each other happy. In another timeline, Nora had wondered if she and Victoria could ever have been friends. So as well as asking about Lockwood, Nora had also asked Gideon to track down Victoria, to find out the best way of introducing her to Jenna. She’d been happy to hear that Michael and Russell were still Victoria’s best friends; they had seemed good guys from what Nora had known of them, and although Nora could never tell them about the circumstances in which she first met them, she could sit there now, enjoying their conversation, nodding along with Russell when he said he could tell that they were witnessing the start of something big with Victoria and Jenna.

 

Nora needed to be on her own for this one.

For a moment she’d allowed herself to hope that maybe somehow she could have changed things again; Barry had told her, after all, that when he tried to return to his original timeline he found that some things had changed, such as the partner who clearly didn’t like him where Barry couldn’t even remember meeting the guy. But this still remained the same; Lia had still been killed at the hands of Godspeed.

There would have been a chance; Nora could have grabbed Lia from the crowds and brought her back to 2019, then returned her to 2049. But she understood now that anything could have happened if she had attempted that, any number of changes that could have been made to the timeline (most notably Godspeed being released if anyone tried to point out that Lia’s presence in the timeline meant he couldn’t have killed her), so she had done what she had to do, made the decision to leave the altered timeline alone.

Nora had thought she’d dealt with her grieving for Lia back then, but she now understood that she hadn’t, not really; her discovery that her mother had given her the power dampening chip had pushed Lia to the back of her mind at the time. Now she laid her bouquet of flowers on Lia’s grave, vowed to honour her memory by continuing the fight against metahumans who used their powers for evil.

 

She’d walked these steps so many times, firstly when her mother had taken her for playdates with Jenna, (which at first had translated as Nora getting under Jenna’s feet until they were a little older and Jenna had started to see Nora as a friend), then later on when she was choosing to spend more time over there to get some space from Iris. In the last few months she had distanced herself from her family, unable to forgive them for having known all along about the power dampening chip, and therefore she hadn’t been here in such a long time. Yet now, Nora ran up the stairs to the house, needing nothing more than to see her grandparents again.

“Nora!” Cecile Horton exclaimed as she unloaded her bags from the back of the car. “You’re just in time. We just got back from our trip to Florida.”

Cecile had been bugging Joe about that one for quite a while when Nora had last seen her here in 2049; she’d obviously finally persuaded him. Nora smiled as she threw her arms around Cecile, listened to Joe grumbling about the guy behind him who’d snored right in his ear for the entire flight and to Cecile talking about hearing the thoughts of their annoying neighbours all week, and thought about how much she had missed her family. But she couldn’t allow herself to think about the timeline where this moment would not have been possible; Cecile and Joe must never know their fate in the alternate timeline, and even as Nora could tell they were wondering why the sudden turnaround after having left 2049 on bad terms, she knew she had to keep up the front of everything being okay, just enjoy her time catching up with them again.

She glanced around at all the family photos on the walls; some of herself with Jenna, some with Iris, and that one she remembered of the whole family at Joe and Cecile’s silver wedding anniversary…it was just the same as she always remembered it, Nora, Iris, Wally and Jenna gathered around Joe and Cecile…and no Barry.

She really had restored things to the way they were. In this timeline, Barry had not been saved.

 

“Little runner?”

“You weren’t expecting to see me here again, were you?” Nora spat. “You were never trying to help me. You were helping yourself, you just wanted me to give you the chance to take over. Well, guess what. You didn’t succeed. All you managed to do was bring about the Anti Metahuman Act and spend most of the rest of your days in hiding. And you didn’t get to enjoy your victory. You didn’t even get to see the battle for Central City, because in the 2049 I’ve just come from, no one even knows whether you’re still alive or whether you’ve been dead since ’46. So you manipulated me into giving my father the cure for nothing.”

Eobard Thawne just stared at her.

“And just so you know? It’s never going to happen, because I destroyed all the samples of the cure. Except this one.” Nora paused, giving Thawne a moment to see that what she was holding in her hand was the last surviving sample of the cure. “Which I saved for you, to make sure your attempt at metahuman takeover never happens. Happy regular old human life, asshole.” 

As Nora stabbed at Eobard Thawne, knew that she had successfully prevented him from ever using his powers to take over, she vaguely thought she heard Barry calling her name, but all that mattered in the moment was Thawne’s defeat. As Thawne slumped to the floor, Nora finally turned round to see Barry standing in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” Nora sobbed, although she was relieved to notice he didn’t look quite as angry as she was expecting. “I just needed my dad. But I realised that Central City needs the Flash. Even with stopping him, someone else could still come along. And I didn’t even manage to change anything. I didn’t save you from disappearing.”

“We still have time, Nora,” Barry pointed out. “Taking my powers wasn’t the way. And yes, I was angry when I first heard about you doing that, working with him, the timeline you created. But I had a talk with your mom, she helped me understand. But we can work on it, with Cisco and Caitlin, see if we can find a better way. Maybe by stopping Thawne you will have changed something.”

Nora wasn’t so sure; knew that her next stop after here would be the Flash Museum, to find out whether Barry’s disappearance had been in 2024 as per the original timeline, or whether he was right and she’d managed to buy her younger self some time with him. But she chose to smile, and say “Maybe you’re right, and one day I’ll wake up, see you here with my mom, and realise you’ve been part of my life all along.”

Barry looked at her, smiled, knowing what she was going to say.

“I’m going to hang out here in 2049 for a while,” Nora went on. “I spent too long running away from facing up to things here, to my relationships with everyone. Your Central City needs the Flash; but if Godspeed and Thawne have shown me anything, it’s that there are metahumans needing to be fought here as well. 2049’s Central City needs its XS to continue the fight here and now.”

“I think that’s the best decision,” Barry nodded, “but just know this. I’m not giving up on finding a way. We’ll see each other again, Nora.”

 

Nora walked through the corridors of the Flash Museum that she had once known so well, noting the changes to the Cicada exhibit, anticipating and yet dreading the exhibit relating to the Flash’s disappearance.

Wait. That couldn’t be right. The poster now read…”2019? What the hell?”


End file.
